I finally managed to turn the lock and swing the door open.
Both Tina and I ran out onto the back patio. I grabbed her hand and kept running toward the back stairs that led up to the second-story apartment.
“Bertie!” I called as we ran into the apartment.
No answer.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Stella answered with a high-pitch bark. She charged directly at Tina.
“Oh, this must be your little dog, Stella,” she said in a singsong voice as she reached down to the fluffy puppy, who looked too small and too delicate to harm anything.
Before I could warn Tina, Stella chomped down on her outstretched hand.
“Owwwie! She bit me.”
“Don’t take it personally. She bites everyone.” I locked the door behind us and then tossed Stella several bacon treats. “Is your hand okay?”
Tina flexed her fingers as she looked at the red welts on her knuckles. “I think so.”
“Sorry about Stella. I’m still working on getting her to stop doing that.” I was making some progress. She hadn’t bitten me in weeks.
I moved about the apartment, not really accomplishing anything. Nervous energy kept me from standing still. Tina stayed near the door. She eyed Stella, who’d thankfully stopped barking. Instead, my little pup was following me around, occasionally nudging my leg, which was doggie language for “Toss me another bacon treat already.”
“If you keep feeding her like that,” Tina pointed out, “she’s going to end up as round as a fuzzy beach ball.”
“It’s the only way I know to keep her from barking,” I said, just as something crashed below us. “Did you hear that? Do you think it’s the police?”
I rushed into Bertie’s bedroom, which had windows that overlooked the street. The street was empty.
“Do you smell smoke?” Tina shouted from the other room.
“Smoke? No. No. No. That little fire starter isn’t going to ruin my shop. This building is over a hundred years old. I can’t stay up here and let her just burn the place down.” I unlatched the door and started to charge out of the apartment to get back downstairs.
Tina grabbed me around the waist. “You can’t go back in. Not if there’s a fire.”
“We can’t let her destroy the shop. Mabel picked me because she believed I could protect her shop, her heritage. Let go of me.”
She tightened her grip.
“Police,” a deep voice shouted downstairs.
“Thank goodness,” I said.
Stella greeted the officer’s announcement with a fanfare of yips.
“Let’s get down there.” I tugged at Tina. She finally relented and followed me as I hurried down to the shop’s back door.
“Officer!” I called to one of the uniformed men searching the building’s perimeter. His hand moved toward his gun. “I’m Penn, the owner. This is my sister. We’re the ones who called Detective Gibbons.”
He gave a sharp nod.
“I smelled smoke,” Tina said. “Is there a fire?”
“I don’t know ma’am. I haven’t been inside.”
“Can we go inside?” I eyed the back door as if it were the entrance to Shangri-La. “I need to get in there.”
I needed to see what havoc Candy had wrought.
“Not until it’s clear.” He got on the radio. After some back and forth with the other officers, he hooked his radio back on his belt.
“The intruder has fled the scene,” he said. “We have men searching the area.”
“Is there a fire?” I demanded.
“There was. It’s been contained.”
“I need to get in there.” My voice turned shrill as I pictured a shop in ruins and all of those chocolates we’d spent hours crafting melting into pools of goo.
After some more back and forth on the radio with his fellow officers, the cop led us inside with the admonishment not to touch anything. The police weren’t letting us walk through the crime scene as a favor to us. No, they were professionals after all. They wanted me to tell them what had been moved, broken, or even stolen. After all, I might have simply been a bad businesswoman who kept a messy shop.
My mouth dropped open at the sight of the office. It had been wrecked. All of the pieces of paper that had once been in the file drawers or in the desk now lay scattered everywhere. Desk drawers lay in splinters on the floor.
The remnants of a small fire still smoldered in the wire trash can.
If I hadn’t been here and if I hadn’t called the police right away, I might have lost the shop. Heck, Tina and I had been in the shop when Candy had broken in looking to prove she was the one and only woman for Bixby. If we hadn’t escaped when we had, I shuddered to think what she might have done to us.
Chapter 18
The next morning, Bertie and I arrived at the shop before sunrise. The police had finished investigating the crime scene around ten o’clock the previous night and had returned possession of the shop to us. A piece of plywood had been nailed to the large opening where the plate glass window had been. The glaziers had promised to arrive by seven thirty this morning to replace it yet again.
Thankfully, Candy had only had time to spill all the paperwork from the office in order to make her trash-can fire. She hadn’t touched the bonbons or truffles we’d made yesterday. Nor had she done any damage to the front of the shop (save for the broken window). The kitchens had also escaped unscathed.
“Don’t you think it odd that Candy didn’t break the glass display case or smash my teacup collection?” I asked Bertie as I sorted the papers still lying in jumbled heaps on the office floor. I’d brought Stella downstairs with us. She “helped” by pushing her nose under a rather thick pile of papers as if trying to tunnel through them.
“Everything you’ve said that woman has done seems odd,” Bertie said as she dumped ashes from the trash can into a plastic bag. “She’s plumb crazy. I’m just thanking heaven and the angels above us that she wasn’t able to do more damage.”
As I glanced at the papers I was picking up from the floor, I couldn’t help but realize I had no idea what many of them were about. Since taking over the shop, I’d spent very little time in Mabel’s old office. I’d used the room more as a place for Stella to occasionally hang out during the day than as a place to do paperwork.
I started to sort the papers into piles: those that pertained to the charity work Mabel had done over the years, those that pertained to the village of Cabruca in Brazil where the chocolate beans were grown, receipts for the shop, purchase orders, and tax documents from the past … gracious … forty years.
Stella growled and came up from one of her paper tunnels with a yellowed flyer in her mouth. She started tearing at it. While I doubted the old piece of paper was of any importance, I didn’t want to take the chance. I tossed Stella a piece of bacon. While she gobbled the treat, I scooped up the paper.
It was a flyer for the Summer Solstice Beach Music Festival. No, it wasn’t for the one that was happening this week, which I had thought was the first concert of its kind in Camellia Beach. This flyer was from 1975. And it stated on the top of the paper that the festival was in its ninth year.
Apparently Bubba had simply resurrected a festival from the past, from when he was (I quickly did the math in my head) not much older than twenty years old. Why hadn’t he told me about the festival’s long history? We could have used the fact that we were reviving a popular event from the past in our advertising.
According to what I was reading, The Embers had been scheduled to play both during the opening concert and at the grand finale. On the bottom, the flyer listed the singers with the band.
Singers. Plural.
From what everyone had told me, I had assumed Stan Frasier had been the one and only singer with The Embers. After all, his leaving had meant the band’s end.
The name of the second singer surprised me even more than the fact that the band had multiple singers. I read the name again, just to be certain my t
ired mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.
Singing for The Embers were Stan Frasier and Bertie Bays.
Bertie Bays.
My Bertie Bays.
I looked up at her. She was dusting off one of the filing cabinets and complaining that we needed to get busy in the kitchen instead of messing around in here like a couple of maids.
She was a singer?
With The Embers?
“You sing?” I asked her.
“Of course I do. You’ve heard me. It’s good for the soul. Now let’s get out of here; we have a shop to run. These papers can wait, but those chocolates aren’t going to melt themselves.”
“No, I mean professionally. You used to sing professionally?”
She wrinkled her nose as if my question had made the room stink.
I held up the yellowed and half-chewed flyer. “You sang with The Embers.”
“Don’t be silly, Penn. I would sometimes get up and perform with the boys. It wasn’t professional, not by any means.”
“And that’s why you’ve been so worried about Bubba? Because you sang with his band? Because he was a fellow band member?”
“I’d worry about any member of the community if they went missing or were accused of a crime I knew they couldn’t have committed. You know that. We’ll be opening soon. So if you want to get anything useful done this morning, we’d better get busy in the kitchen.”
When I pressed her to talk more about her musical past, Bertie cut her dark brown eyes in my direction before saying, “You’re welcome to waste your time in here thinking about things that no longer matter. The chocolate is waiting in the kitchen, which is where I intend to be.”
A woman of her word, she marched out of the office.
Since Bertie was right—we did have work to do in the kitchen—I made sure Stella had everything she needed (dog bed, water dish, treats). My pup’s outrageously large butterfly-wing-shaped ears quivered with excitement when she realized I was letting her stay with the paper tunnels she’d created. As I closed the door, I heard a loud rip. I hoped she hadn’t sunk her teeth into anything important.
Although I followed Bertie into the kitchen with the intention of getting to work, I couldn’t stop the questions from spilling out of my mouth. I mean, who wouldn’t be curious?
And yet, no amount of prodding would get Bertie to talk about her old singing days. She was too focused on the chocolate and on making sure I didn’t mess up this current batch of raspberry bonbons to talk about anything else.
* * *
An hour before opening time, Bertie and I started the process of making another batch of milk chocolate. Unlike most chocolate shops that purchased their chocolate from wholesalers, we made all of our chocolates directly from the bean. It was an intensive process that took several days. By doing it ourselves, we were able to blend different bean varieties to create a wide range of tones, from something so bitter it crinkled your lips to chocolate with an earthiness that tasted as alive as the rainforest itself to the super-sweet flavors found in children’s candies during the holidays.
Despite the disasters I’d encountered when following Mabel’s recipes for her amazing truffles and bonbons, the act of making the chocolate came almost as second nature to me. Just by smelling the various nibs, I could imagine how the finished product would turn out. My confidence was so strong that I never followed a recipe. Instead, I listened to my instincts.
Bertie smiled as I picked an Ecuadorian nib that consistently produced a light nutty flavor and paired it with the shop’s own Amar bean with its complex and sweetly spicy flavors. It was a pairing I’d used when making dark chocolate but had yet to try in a lighter, sweeter milk chocolate.
I processed the blended nibs in a grinder that worked very much like a household juicer to produce a thick brown paste, which was the chocolate liquor. The flavor at this point reminded me of a horribly strong espresso instead of the basis for what I considered the only kind of dessert worth eating. Why waste calories on anything that wasn’t chocolate?
While I poured the chocolate liquor into an electric stone melangeur—two large marble grinding stones that further refined the chocolate, mixing it at the molecular level with the cocoa butter, sugar, and powdered milk—Bertie left to supervise the replacement of the plate glass window out front.
With the lid on, the melangeur whirled away, transforming the mix into what I hoped would be a smooth milky chocolate that both surprised and pleased the taster. I wouldn’t know the results for two days. That was the minimum amount of time the mixture needed to be ground. Any less time would produce an unpleasantly gritty chocolate.
Since I had some time before the shop opened up, I pulled out Mabel’s recipe book and attempted to make another batch of the raspberry bonbons to add to the ones we’d made that morning. Over the past couple of days, we’d sold more of them than any of the other chocolates combined, probably because the raspberries were in season and nearly bursting with sweet juices.
Even though it was a simple recipe, I left nothing to chance and dutifully followed every step in Mabel’s recipe book. As nine o’clock approached, I stared down at what I’d made and wanted to howl with frustration.
The raspberry filling oozed everywhere, while the outside chocolate coating hadn’t melted correctly. What I ended up with was an unsightly, lumpy mess that tasted faintly of cough syrup.
“What’s wrong?” Bertie rushed into the room. “What happened?”
I must have actually howled my frustration. “Nothing.” I tossed to the floor the dish towel that was hanging from my apron string. “Isn’t it time to open up?”
“In a minute,” Bertie said as she picked up the dish towel. “What’s going—?” she’d started to ask, but then spotted the mess on the prep counter. “Oh, are those raspberry bonbons?”
“They were supposed to be. But as you can see …” I didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m thinking about making a spicy hot pepper chocolate bonbon and calling them bonbon fires. Get it? Bonbon fires, because they’ll be hot?” I said as I started gathering up the few mixing bowls I’d used for Mabel’s recipe.
Bertie frowned at my raspberry mess. “Bonbon fires? Mabel’s never made a recipe for something like that.”
“I know.” I’d studied my maternal grandmother’s recipe book until I’d practically had them all memorized. Too bad all that studying hadn’t helped me master any of them. I couldn’t figure out what the heck I was doing wrong. “I thought I’d play with some flavors and see how it comes out. What I’m picturing is something that would be extra spicy with an infusion of sweet.”
Bertie’s frown deepened. She poked her finger into one of the raspberry globs and tasted the jelly that stuck to her finger. “I don’t know, Penn,” she said with a gagging cough. “It sounds like an interesting idea, but don’t you think you should stick to learning Mabel’s recipes before trying to do something on your own? I’d hate for you to waste your time and energy on something that will turn out like …” She moved to the sink to scrub the remaining jelly off her hand. She splashed a little of the tap water into her mouth while she was at it.
“I suppose you’re right,” I mumbled.
Of course she was right, dang it. I could barely melt a pot of chocolate without burning it. But that didn’t stop the explosion of flavor opposites—hot and cold, spicy and sweet—from playing around in my head, urging me to give it a try.
“Spend some more time this afternoon working on some of Mabel’s easier recipes,” Bertie suggested as I followed her to the front of the shop. She unlocked the front door while I flipped over the “Open” sign.
I agreed to stick to Mabel’s recipe book, but I wasn’t in love with the idea. None of the recipes ever worked out for me. No matter how hard I tried to follow the steps, I seemed to always miss something. Or, as in the case of the raspberry bonbons, several things.
I filled a large coffee mug for myself and frowned as I looked at the spools of red, white, and
blue ribbons that we’d used to tie Congressman Ezell’s bonbon packages. Seeing them got me thinking about Stan’s murder again and the bonbons I’d found Thursday night at the deadly bonfire. Because Stan had once aspired to be as famous as Bixby, even to the point of dressing like the superstar, I’d assumed he was the one who’d plucked the bag of bonbons from the trash after Bixby tossed it.
But wouldn’t it make more sense that his stalker Candy Graves, who believed she was Bixby’s lover, had fished it out of the garbage since the bag was something Bixby had held? I wondered if her house was filled with mementos she’d collected from rooting around in his trash. If that was the case, the cellophane bag of bonbons could prove Candy was at the scene of Stan’s murder.
I also wondered if Gibbons had found any fingerprints on the bag. I doubted he’d tell me even if he had. Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask. My mentioning it might give him the nudge he needed to move him in the right direction. Gibbons still considered both Candy’s stalking and the exploding grill that had singed Bixby’s eyebrows unrelated to Stan’s murder investigation, which troubled me. Although he’d stopped by the shop last night, he’d done it in an unofficial capacity. He was a homicide detective, he’d bluntly pointed out. He didn’t investigate break-ins. Candy might have been up to mischief—criminal mischief—but he didn’t consider her a murder suspect.
When I’d told him he was wrong, he’d patted my head and told me to get some sleep. Okay, he hadn’t actually patted my head, but he might as well have mussed my short blonde hair by dismissing me and my concerns so thoroughly.
“A break-in and murder are two completely different crimes,” he’d told me.
I couldn’t stop thinking he was wrong. Worries kept spinning around in my head as I filled the morning orders. Worries that no one was taking the threat Candy posed seriously; worries that she would get away with murder for the simple reason that she’d killed the wrong man. We sold out of our chocolate croissants within the hour, but that wasn’t unusual for a sunny Saturday morning.
While I refilled the coffee urn at the coffee and tea station, Bertie answered the shop’s phone. She beamed a wide smile when she first answered, but her grin swiftly faded. By the time she’d hung up, which had to be less than a minute into the conversation, her expression had turned fierce.
Playing with Bonbon Fire Page 12
